Friday, March 30, 2012

Friday: SPEED TV Comments

SPEED is the only game in town on Friday from the Martinsville Speedway. Since there is no Nationwide Series race, there is no ESPN event presence. FOX and SPEED get the spotlight.

John Roberts hosts the first NASCAR Live program to kick off the day at noon. Mike Joy, Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds are calling the Cup practice sessions. Matt Yocum and Dick Berggren are the reporters. Rick Allen, Phil Parsons and Michael Waltrip will handle the trucks. Hermie Sadler and Ray Dunlap are the reporters.

The "new look" Trackside will give it another go at 5PM with host Krista Voda. Kyle Petty and Rutledge Wood are the panelists and Marianela Pereyra is the reporter. Regan Smith and Ty Dillon are the guests.

This show gets crazier every week as it veers away from hardcore NASCAR info and heads into the entertainment world. For those asking, the puppet on the show dressed in Dale Jr. fan attire is called Hammerdropper88. Seriously, it has its own Twitter account (@Hammerdropper88) and those on the show and in SPEED PR world send it tweets. Well, it all certainly is interesting to watch.

The nightcap is Danielle Trotta hosting NASCAR Performance and Adam Alexander hosting SpeedCenter. Trotta's show is recorded during the week at the SPEED studios while Alexander is live with all the motorsports news.

We are just going to open the blog for TV comments all day long. It's been a tough couple of weeks in the NASCAR TV world. Maybe Martinsville will be the ticket to turning things around with the fans. Happy to have your comments.

29 comments:

I've given up on SPEED's NASCAR coverage. I used to be glued to the channel from Friday to Sunday, and I watched all the weekday shows too. Now, if I happen to think about it, I'll watch practice and qualifying, and that's about it. "Trackside" has been ruined, "Raceday" always sucked, and now even "NASCAR Performance" is awful. I can't believe the downhill slide of shows I used to watch regularly (except (Raceday).

What I don't understand is how the same company can produce the stellar F1 on SPEED. Steve Matchett, David Hobbs and Bob Varsha are outstanding every single week. They're informative, fun and dignified. No sophomoric hijinx, no reporters hired because they're eyecandy, and no loudmouth, boorish "experts". And all the while, they're sitting in a studio in Charlotte commenting on F1's world feed. Amazing.

I can't believe that SPEED has such a split personality when it comes to covering racing. Are NACAR and F1 fans so dissimilar that they need to be treated in such a divergent manner?

I agree wholeheartedly with what you said Karen. F1 Debrief is all you could ask for in a race inko show. Last reace recap and a solid look to the next race, no puppets, no fawning former racers, no eye candy asking questions that make Larry King look like Edward R Murrow.Seems like the whole basis of Speed's overall programming has been lowered to a lower denominator. Endless ride pimping shows, ludicrous restoration contests, and if I see another 427 Camaro or Hemi Cuda go across an auction block Ill puke. This is the same channel that literally left the end of the Truck race to give us the premier of yet another fixit competition. Even Wind Tunnel is now really an hour commercial it seems for an online aftershow. It used to be a good channel....those were the days...

Don't forget Speed's excellent sports car coverage on Grand-Am (I know, not as good a series as ALMS-and let's not about their broadcast schedule!). Diffy, Till, Schroeder, and Fish (with occasional help from Varsha & Hobbs) have to balance two races taking place at the same time. And they have a great time doing it!

I appreciate the tv show breakdown listed here. Following are a list of the shows I used to watch religiously, but watch no more---Nascar Now,N-performance, Race Day, Victory Lane,Trackside and Wind Tunnel. I RECORD Hub while I watch the evening news and can blow through that in a few minutes. Practice and qualifying will be on but be on Mute until I see something interesting. On Sundays, I start watching when they do opening ceremonies. When the race starts, I watch and hit the Mute as soon as the booth starts insulting me. Last week, it took 4 minutes. A true indication of how bad the races have been is that I haven't watched the Wednesday repeat of the race on Speed in a long time. What a mess.

I always have practice on when I am home for it, though I realized I don't actually 'watch' so much as I listen when I'm doing other things. I am fine with Mike & Larry talking practice and the reporters interviewing people. I could do without either Waltrip. Darrell tends to go off to way back land WAY too often....and I've realized recently that I don't trust what he says anymore; he's lost too much credibility. Too many times he gets contradicted later; so now I just don't even believe what he says most of the time. Larry seems to keep up with what's going on in the garage. His worst thing (other than grammar) is repeating his favorite stories, but I can live with that because I know most of the time what he says is useful.

So poor Regan & Ty get made fools of tonight, lucky them, I won't be watching. Please free Krista & Kyle from this nonsense.

I still watch Performance. There was nothing 'wrong' with it before, but adding Danielle hasn't really hurt it that much; all she does is introduce the conversations and go to break; it's not like she's pretending to know things. I miss Bootie's wry humor a lot though.

I would rather watch the Weather channel than Raceday. I only turn over to see interviews, unless it's another topic being beat to death (ie, the 48 appeal.)

DW made an epic FAIL during practice during a discussion about the sponsorship on the 17 this weekend. 17 is sponsored by a foundation for wounded veterans and DW got the name of the veteran on the car mixed up with the incredibly stupid "I hate Steven Singer" radio ads. Lets just say it was kinda embarrasing for DW.

Sure am glad all of my errors arent out in the open air for everyone to bash. What a perfect bunch we fans have become. The more access we get the more we piss and moan. Helpful critique I can accept and I am sure Speed welcomes it. Personal attacks and the same old same old its not the way it used to be I bet they ignore. I remember when we were lucky if we saw 5 minutes on Wild World of Sports. So I enjoy the good and ignore the bad.

Okay, I'll take that back - shut up, booth! Cars on track, no ticker, one car shots, and everyone camped out in the garage....I hope Nascar gives these broadcast companies a spanking come renegotiation time.

I expected better from Speed. Used to be better, in fact...in the Truck series, but mission creep is even starting to affect that.

It's silly of me to say it, conspiracy-nut-wise, but I wonder what kind of money or favors are changing hands to get the same feature parade of maybe 10 drivers in all three series with very rare exceptions.

Must be pretty good to risk alienating people who are fans of the other 33+ people on track.

Anon 5:26...keeps the more sophisticated spam-bots at bay...few jerks have cheerfully figured out how to autopost entries. Without captcha, TDP would literally end up flooded, and comments would be unusable.

Don't see how you think they won't - you think their teams/sponsors are going to take no for an answer?

Anon at 7:59, you're close. The nonsense is aimed at that age group that doesn't exercise much discretion regarding how they spend the money they have, and hasn't yet developed many financial obligations. They may not have much money yet, but they can throw a much larger percentage of it away and are easily persuaded to do so.

I was thinking of a much younger age that would enjoy this nonsense. The ones that are not old enough yet to have any money, like 6 to 10 years old. I mean really being wrapped in toilet paper or the other silly games!

1. Trackside is done, SPEED needs to retire it and if they really need to, create an all new series with new people or a combination of new and existing people.

2. I'm tired of 3 hours pre-shows including 2 hours of Raceday and "stick with the Biff" sayings, Now I just tune in to watch the race without a pre-show, much better.

3. I do watch practice if I'm home. That's worth watching.

4. NASCAR Qualifying is boring okay, that's it.

5. I don't really care about NASCAR Performance, sorry.

6. RaceHub during the week is ok depending upon the day of the week. But I do like watching Jimmy Spencer's take 2 times a week at 5 minutes each. They could go 10 minutes each. And Danielle Trotta does a good job for the most part.